


The Living Skeleton

by foolscapper



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Captivity, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Starvation, and we run into desert hobos in horrible situations, hurt!max is my jam, in which it's years later, not really shipping but good for the idea of it idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 08:27:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4739597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolscapper/pseuds/foolscapper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toast finds Max, years later, starved and withered.</p><p>Time to go home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Living Skeleton

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the warnings listed in the tags. Sorry if any typos — it's admittedly unbeta'd, just a fast idea. 
> 
> I may write a Furiosa and Max addition to it as well, sometime! Maybe other wife portions, too, idk.

Toast finds _him_ on a week-long drive with the war boys, in a pit carved deep down into rock — a sort of holding area, overlaid with welded metal bars. A prisoner, the slavers had admitted, someone to possibly sell to whoever wanted him, for food, perhaps. Servitude. Sex. The last was a trigger of memory, of wretched hot breath and a pale face. Toast's lips had curled and bared teeth when she shot the survivor of the camp in the skull, but she had forced herself to focus on the task at hand — the one called Max. Awful creature at first, she recalls — had growled and snarled at her like a rabid dog when she tried to pull him away from Furiosa, leaving her to gasp away from him. When had that changed? Perhaps when Angharad fell. Maybe a bit after.

Important thing was, he never looked at her like a thing. Not a victim, neither. He wasn't afraid to wave a gun in her face, and he had blood on him that wasn't his own. And Toast became just like that, herself. Maybe he helped. Why she'd ever look at him as a role model was beyond her; just look at 'im, skittish and nearly mute most of the time, battling demons that they couldn't see, but could feel, like an aura around him. Yeah, Toast, you know how to pick 'em. You also know how to stumble across 'em.

She slips up her goggles and waves back the small pack of warboys she'd brought on her journey for supplies, knees scraping the rock uncomfortably as she peers down into the sunlit rocky hole and curls her petite fingers around the grating. It doesn't even need grating, really. It's so far down in there, nobody'd ever be able to reach the exit. She sees Max's huddled form again, thanks to the sun looming directly above them. She wouldn't have even known it was him, if not for the jacket she'd found in the item piles, next to the bones. The camp here, they ate a lotta' people. It's a miracle that Max ended up in one of the slave pits, or else she'd have probably looked at his skull (picked clean like the others) and forced herself to move on, unaware that the eye sockets used to have gray-blue-colored eyeballs in 'em.

No, he's alive, down there. Just needs to find a way to pluck him up and out, get him back to the green. The fool should've just stayed put with them. He saved Furiosa's life at the end, didn't he? He would've been praised for helping get rid of Joe. Maybe that's what scared him off. She's not sure. She still gets uncomfortable with some of the reverence. It's not like she'd done what she did for anyone at the Citadel. She ran because she wanted to live without him touching her. Dag had smiled thinly and told her that's reason enough. They couldn't all be Angharad, s'much as they loved her. Besides, she had ghosts of her own.

She drums her fingers on the rebar, wondering how to even begin this.

"Max?" she calls. The huddled figure twitches, looking small. When he unfolds, she thinks maybe the lighting's playing ugly tricks on her; he looks bad, all angular, but suddenly a cold dread falls over her when she realizes by his beard that he could've been down here for a very, very long time. And she knows they wouldn't have wasted much of their supplies in feeding him. She waves for rope, and the war boys bring it, no questions, just a 'ma'am'. Max curls back up. She can see the jagged lines that form words on his back, just barely. Had no clue he had them. Supposes she should have guessed. He was a bloodbag. Mhm. She'd helped oversee the release of the remaining men there, dazed and half-dead and tattooed. She'd plucked needles out of necks.

There's nothing left to fear. Furiosa'd taught her that.

Furiosa. She needs to bring her the fool.

"Max," she repeats, trying to sound stern. "Max, I'm coming down to get you. Got a rope, they're gonna hoist us out; if you try anything stupid... suppose I could forgive you, but I'll still kick you in your old fella there." The hole itself is big enough to fit... probably a good twenty people. It's spacious enough that she won't land on top of 'em. She shimmies down, boots scuffing against the rock; it's smeared with dry blood where fingers tried to find purchase and scale the impossible wall. There's a small echo and a plume of dust as she lands on the tips of her feet, rocking onto her knees and back up.

Max hasn't budged, just has his arm thrown over his face. It looks all wrong — she swallows hard and steps forward, trying to pretend the way his skin clings to his bone is a mirage. He might as well be a skeleton, one of the ones that had been used to decorate the Citadel. Just feet away and Toast isn't sure which Max she has right now: the one from before Angharad's fall, or the one from after. She's not certain if it's all rewound and he'll wind up snarling at her and trying to snatch her by the throat.

The huddled, skinny thing rasps out something.

... Fuck it. She forces herself to step forward. A pearl-necklace-line-up of bald white heads circle the opening above them. Carefully, carefully, she puts her hand on Max's knee. His bare knee. Strange that somehow the Citadel was more generous in it's worser days than this camp is: they at least let Max keep his pants and brace, back before. Out here in some godforsaken hole, Max is, she suddenly sees, utterly naked and exposed. Her ears go hot, but out of mortification on his behalf. Finally, the madman called Max looks at her wearily, and she can see in his eyes that he's the man who drove back to the salt flats to stop them.

Barely a sound, but:

"... Mmn... You."

It pulls a crooked smirk out of her. "You look like pig shit."

Also, he's the last one left. They found two healthy people in another pit trap. Three corpses in another, and one woman who died as they hefted her out. The thought that it could happen now to him, too, hits her hard. He looks bad. His arms and legs are withered thinner, the skin on his ribs slip-sliding up and down the bone in clear shapes. The beard doesn't hide the sunken, frail shape of his cheekbones, and for a moment she fears he may just crumble into dust from her touch. His eyes are sunken and haunted still, but they're clear, bright bluish. Reminds her of tales of ocean water shining like smoothed glass. He hasn't tried to rip her throat out or even remove her hand from his bony, scarred knee, so that's good. His eyelids sink dazedly as she uncaps a canteen and holds it up to his mouth.

"Drink a little. Just a little. You know why."

He tries to drink too much anyway, so she has to pull it away and listen to him wordlessly complain about it. She snaps her fingers at the war boys above, has requests they fill easily. From the stolen goods, they retrieve a pair of raggedy old pants and fling them down. She says nothing as she helps him slide his legs stiffly through them. The jacket, she already has on hand, and the relief she sees in his face as he puts it back on is reward enough for her trip; going home without anything but a dusty old fool would be fine with her.

She secures a rope around his torso, hesitantly putting an arm around him so that she may be pulled up alongside him; as he is right now, she doesn't trust him to use his hands, stop himself from shredding his skin up the side of the jagged rock. He coughs again as she positions him beside her, the crown of his head sagging against her cheek. Not willingly, probably, and it eases her discomfort; it's not very fair to be cruel and shove him away, after what they went through together. It's been years, though, and she's still getting used to the idea of men touching her and being human about it. Max is good.

As they climb, he surprises her by lifting his head of his own volition.

"Mn — _Toast_."

Did he finally remember her name? She huffs, the filthy, smelly hair on his head rustling with her breath. Her hand curls a bit more securely while his lungs rattle a bit under her palm. "That's me. Surprised you remember." Or maybe she's not. He seems like the type to never let things go, try as he might. That's why he went insane, innit? Because if you don't let go, it festers and clogs you up with tar n' oil? His lungs draw in another heavy breath. His good leg moves and tries to help push them up the wall, while he catches her off guard by grumbling, "Don't damage the goods."

So she's right, she sees (with a grin). He isn't the type to let go.

As her and her loyal war boy, Fanger, load up the living skeleton into one of the truck beds and she tucks a blanket around him, he asks her about the others, about home. The Green Place. She promises to tell him if he lets her give him a few spoonfuls of surprisingly good paste they call nutritious. Max falls asleep like the dull roar of the engine is his lullaby, and Toast — short coarse hair whipping in the wind — checks his pulse every ten minutes.

* * *

It's three days into the drive back home that she sets him to rest with the back of his head against her chest; he's all tension in his shoulders at the motion until she tells him to calm down and rest, that if he doesn't mind it, she sure doesn't. She's got plans. And when she applies herself to a plan, she follows through. Not like Dag, who half-finishes everything she does at the Citadel. Her and her silly little side projects, all barely began before she abandons them for helping everyone finish their own. It's admittedly nerve-wracking to have another person this close to her; even with the wives, it'd taken a lot to be as close as they are, and really, she barely knows Max even though they know him too well. But Max eventually settles as much as Max can settle, bare-bone arms tucked in behind the flaps of his jacket as he lays framed on both sides by her muscular legs. Alright. Good. She sits there with him for a long moment while the warboys refuel the gas tanks and check the engines, deciding to spring her question on Max finally, give the reason for her sudden touchy-feely kindness. "So... Would you stay still if I cut off that mangy hair on your face?"

She doesn't want to take him back looking like this. And she wants to see more of the Max she knew, instead of the half-dead husk that is slowly being pushed back to life, like a dingo pup rubbed until it cries. And it's not like he can sit up very well on his own right now. So. So. This is her gift, her ability to grow, like a weed in the radioactive soil. It's a long time before Max responds, but she feels the slightest nod of his head against her collarbone. Maybe he wants to look more like the old Max, too. It's amazing how quickly people can deteriorate out here.

She's given a sharp knife. She's good with knives now, not simply guns, so she shears away the tangled nests rolled on his scalp pretty effortlessly while he pulls his jacket closer to himself. It makes her stop for a moment, wondering if this is a little too traumatic during a time when he's already this messed up; he's not right in the head sometimes, after all. Having a knife this close must be a bit frightening, especially when it'd take nothing at all for her to slit his throat. She figures he must see the ridiculousness of that paranoia, though, what with all the effort she's given getting him this far.

"Hey," she says, when his head lolls after a bit of time passes. Drifting off again, she sees. That's just what he does, huh? Drifts off to somewhere else. But she's quietly awed that he's found a comfortable enough moment to nod off during a hair cut. Or is she just not that intimidating? When he hums in response, she slices away another long tangled lock off his head and thinks about how to say what she's been wanting to say for years now — " _Thanks_. For coming back for us."

They're both relaxed, now.

Cleanly shaven, hair uneven but short, Max rumbles back, "Thanks. For coming back. For me."

And that's that.

The two sit silently in the back of the truck until the Citadel comes back into view, the pale man sleeping, the dark-skinned woman cranking her rusted little music box. It's a full moon tonight, satelittes whizzing around in the night sky. "Almost there," she says, leaving behind the darkness of the Fury Road. Max shifts (a light weight against her leg), hums (rusty like nails), and relaxes (sleeps through the night). His snores converse with the steady whir of the engines; alive for another day. She thinks, _Atta' boy._

Not quite a skeleton to bury yet, are you?

No, not yet, not tonight.

Tonight, they go home.


End file.
